Database Description

The AlzGene (http://www.alzgene.org) database aims to provide an unbiased, centralized, publicly available and regularly updated collection of genetic association studies performed on Alzheimer's disease (AD) phenotypes. Data is collected following systematic searches of publicly available scientific literature databases, as well as the table of contents of journals in genetics, neurology and psychiatry. Extracted data will include characteristics of the investigated populations (e.g. origin and ethnicity, sample sizes, onset ages, gender distribution) as well as gene-specific results and genotyping details. Please note, that only studies published in peer reviewed journals are considered for inclusion into the database. The only exception from sampling all available genetic association studies are the e2/e3/e4 polymorphisms in APOE - the only established AD risk gene - for which only a subset of studies is included in AlzGene.

The database can be searched either by gene/protein name or alias, as well as by chromosomal location. Summary overviews for each gene include population specific information, as well as study-specific information (e.g. genotype distribution and allele frequencies, links to the polymorphisms studied, etc.). Finally, a meta-analysis based on crude odds ratio (OR) estimates are calculated from the available case-control association data for each polymorphism with genotype data from at least three independent samples.